Making a significant process change in any organization is not an easy task. Getting all clinicians, pharmacists, and other medical professionals to implement CPOE successfully requires a lot of wit. That’s why it is always advisable to contract a professional CPOE implementation service from the onset. When you work with a consultant, here are some of the benefits your organization will gain concerning CPOE implementation.
1. Efficient Planning Before Implementation
CPOE implementation must be carefully planned with all the stakeholders and representatives on the planning team. No organization succeeds by imposing CPOE on physicians. Neither can any provider go live across their entire hospital within a day or two. CPOE implementation is not like a change of furniture; it’s a change of work culture.
That’s why imposing a big bang never works. Your consultant knows the training level, direct communication, and workflow change needed to create a phased rollout.
CPOE will be more successful when implemented in logical clusters of departments. For example, in a large facility, related specialties, units, and surgical wards can be grouped. This will make it easier for IT staff to manage new hardware rollouts and quickly resolve software issues without spending a lot of time walking from one department to another.
2. Training for All Potential Users
Clinicians will not leave their offices and attend training sessions. They are already time-stretched, trying to see as many patients as possible within their consulting hours. That’s why asking your doctors to leave their desk and attend a training session will be a fruitless endeavor.
Experienced CPOE consultants know that the most effective way to train physicians is to get them to use the new system. Physicians are smart enough to quickly pick up the necessary information required to use the system.
Bringing in IT experts for a few weeks is the best way to bring the physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals up to speed with the new system.
Let the doctors enter the orders while the IT trainers put them through any problematic issues during their initial experience. As a training supplement, you can add user tours and a knowledge base with FAQs that the doctors can study at their convenience. This approach will produce a positive response among most clinicians.
3. Effective Decision Support for Clinicians
You need to help doctors overcome their loss of autonomy. Older clinicians are not used to the cookbook type of medicine that health IT is promoting. They love to practice medicine as an art, personalizing each patient’s visit. As a result, clinicians naturally feel a loss of professional autonomy as streamlined and automated workflow replace their handwritten orders.
It is necessary to show physicians how they can create their own pick lists and explain how the computer improves the quality of prescription and treatment orders to increase physicians’ co-operation. While implementing decision support, it is vital to tune down some of the warnings and red flags that can be more distractive than helpful. Limit the decision support to a few hundred rules and let the physicians know that the computer is their friend, not a foe.
Work With a Professional CPOE Implementation Service
Contact Lifepoint Informatics today to discuss your CPOE implementation needs. We are fully prepared to give you the professional support and expertise you require to succeed with your new automated order entry system.